If Lamiflex is now a leading manufacturer of composite materials, it is thanks to a visionary business idea in 1976 that led the company to design and produce a brand-new type of flexible rapier tape for rapier weaving machines. The first nylon tapes easily melted at high speeds. Lamiflex designed a new composite cotton and phenolic-resin tape that could cope with higher loom speeds – this invention changed the textile machinery industry for ever.
Composite rapier tapes are, in fact, the historical Lamiflex product that has always been at the center of research and company innovation. It is known and appreciated throughout the world and is still today the jewel in the crown of a company that is not only the inventor, but also the undisputed technological and market leader for this type of product. For more than forty-five years and despite the growing diversification into other sectors, rapier tapes and their continuous improvement remain in the heart and mind of everyone who works in Lamiflex, now even more so, thanks to renewed enthusiasm and closer-than-ever collaboration with Itema.

Weaving mills worldwide increasingly choose rapier weft insertion technology for the unparalleled versatility and fabric quality unbeatable among other technologies when producing the full range of woven textiles, from apparel, to luxurious home textiles, and highly complex technical applications and weaves, to name just a few. Wherever there is a rapier weaving machine, there is a need for one of its most strategically important components – the flexible rapier tapes. Lamiflex’ continuous R&D and 40-year expertise in advanced materials and composite solutions is instrumental in ensuring that Lamiflex tapes are, and remain, the absolute benchmark and best-in-class when it comes to the highest performance in the market, capable to develop alongside, and anticipate even, the breakthrough developments in the highly competitive textile machinery industry.
In the sector of textile machinery industry, Lamiflex has also invented other important accessory products like sprocket wheels (gear wheels for moving the rapier tapes). Lamiflex is, to this day, the main supplier of rapier tapes and accessory products to the top, most prominent OEMs of advanced rapier weaving machines. Lamiflex products are 100% Made in Italy, a guarantee of the highest quality standards that represents an unparalleled competitive advantage and one of the main reasons that make Lamiflex a reliable and professional composite materials manufacturer for Customers all over the world.

Lamiflex entered Itema Group in 2017 and since then the two companies work together with great synergy, sharing their know-how on an open co-engineering platform to develop constantly evolving innovative solutions to allow weavers to get the most from their rapier looms. The strategic partnership with Lamiflex enables Itema to leverage the consolidated know-how and over 40-year expertise in carbon fiber and other composite materials markets and to work together with Lamiflex on constantly improving the lifetime and performance of the best-in-class rapier tapes, sprocket wheels and other key components of the Itema weaving machines. First result of synergies between Itema and Lamiflex has been the TLC triple-layer carbon rapier tape featured on the R95002denim.